Strategies, tips, how to's and best practices for online video publishers

According to a new survey released today by Animoto, the leading cloud-based online video creation service, consumers are hungry for video and four times as many of them would rather watch a product video than read about it. In fact, of the 1,051 U.S. consumers surveyed, 1 in 4 actually lose interest in a company if it doesn’t have product video. The company issued a press release and infographic detailing the findings of its 2015 Video Marketing Cheat Sheet.

Animoto CEO Brad Jefferson sees video as a huge opportunity for businesses to engage with consumers:

The growth of online video marketing in recent years has been tremendous,” said Jefferson. “Today, there are more than 7 billion videos watched every day on Facebook and YouTube. Historically, in order to create and distribute high-quality video to your customers it was cost-prohibitive for all but the largest brands. However, today’s tools and platforms ensure that small and medium businesses can reach their audiences where they hang out online. This represents one of the biggest marketing opportunities for small businesses in a long time.”

80 percent of consumers say a video showing how a product or service works is important when learning about the company

56 percent of consumers says customer testimonials are helpful when purchasing a product/service

About half of customers say that ‘about the company’ videos are the most helpful when purchasing a product/service

About Animoto:Animoto makes it easy for businesses to create effective, professional videos within minutes with no video editing experience. Businesses use Animoto to enhance and promote their brands, drive website traffic, increase sales, and create dynamic email, social and online marketing campaigns.Founded in 2006, Animoto is based in New York City with an office in San Francisco. For more information go to: http://animoto.com/business.

You can do a lot in 6 seconds. You can read an email, delete ten emails, respond to a text, pick out a pair of shoes, zip up your jacket, but can you create an impression that describes your whole brand in one fell swoop? That is six seconds of swooping, mind you. According to Fast Company, about 9 months after its launch, Vine was the best way for a brand or company to reach its Twittering, Facebooking, Instagramming audience. Apparently a branded Vine is four times more likely to be viewed than any other type of branded video. Here are four companies that have been using Vine to its highest marketing potential.

Urban Outfitters

Urban Outfitters upped their DIY game with this quick Vine on how to easily personalize a pair of high-tops. The giant retail company has been posting Vines since its conception in January 2013 and has over 77 thousand followers. Their Vines normally consist of showing fans how to style their new outfitters’ clothing, performances and parties involving store launches, and holiday-themed posts like this ouija board snippet.

Target

Target’s October Vine is a clever stop-motion method for grabbing the attention of its customers. Target’s social media gurus recognize that the millions of people spending money in their stores want something more to believe in than a wide and affordable product selection. Vine allows companies to create a personality out of thin air. Just as we’d check our Facebook pages to see what so and so is up to, consumers can check their Vine to see what their favorite companies are doing for Halloween. For a company to present itself like a friend is one sure fire way to secure a place in the good graces of its fans and fans-to-be.

Lowes

While Lowes has very few followers compared to Urban Outfitters, their Vine still perfectly describes the brand as helpful, innovative, and “always improving.” The company could certainly stand to be a little more active, however, considering Target posts a Vine at least once a month and has twice the viewers. Lowes’ cleverly worded hashtag, #lowesfixinsix, and the following how-to micro-vids are an extremely useful tool for visual learners wanting to find easy fixes for pesky problems. How do you get rid of nasty looking water stains? Use lemons! Having trouble packing your holiday ornaments without breaking a few? Find them a new home. Lowes gives away its expertise for free, letting those 15 thousand followers in on a few tricks of the trade.

The Glitch Mob

To preview a product that hasn’t hit the shelves quite yet is certainly one way to dangle the carrot. The Glitch Mob, an electronic music group from California, let out a 6-second take of a not-yet-released album, allowing their Vine followers to get excited before the big release. Unbounce says to “leave them wanting more,” as part of its quick video marketing guide to Social Media. Showing a preview of a product will leave your viewers wanting to find out more about your brand, so don’t hold back. Or actually, yes, hold back a little… Did you know that more than 40 percent of Vine videos are brand videos? The more creative your brand can get in 6 seconds the more the video will be shared, advertised, and seen by potential fans and customers. According to Gryffin Media, Vine had over 1 million users within 3 months of its conception and it has 40 million users today. What can you do to ensure your Vine success?

Camille McClane is a writer, researcher and editor, who frequently blogs about about web hosting and social media. Her favorite subject to focus on is emerging technology trends and its overall effect within business expansion and relations. She hopes the readers of OnlineVideoPublishing.com enjoy this article as much as she enjoyed writing it.

You know who claims to know content marketing these days? Everybody who likes money, that’s who.

What if there was a way to separate the veteran communicator from the Johnny Come Lately?

So that in the midst of this content marketing gold rush, clients and hiring managers can begin identify the pros who know how to think about marketing, conceive strategic content, create the right media, craft compelling messages that actually resonate with key audiences.

You know, the pros who have been doing content marketing all along—as opposed to the person for whom “content” is just a lucrative new vocabulary word.

“Honestly, the industry needs this,” writes Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi. “This is all in the natural progression of a growing industry. “Showcasing the best that the industry can offer, both projects and agencies, will help us get to where we need to go.”

So enter your best work in the Content Marketing Awards—by the May 17 deadline— and prove you belong.

Or get off the bandwagon.

David Murray is program chairman for the Content Marketing Awards, and editor of ContentWise. For two decades David has written and spoken widely on corporate, political and personal communication issues. He’s editor of Vital Speeches of the Day and his writing has appeared in Advertising Age, The New York Times and The Atlantic

Today, when consumers shop online, they expect the personalized attention of an in-store experience. They want brands to provide engaging experiences during purchases, and at every stage of the customer journey. As a result, innovative marketers are turning to online video as an engagement tool.

Below are five considerations for ensuring your brand’s success with online video.

Search engines favor video, and now structure their results to reward sites that use it. Consequently, online marketers are investing more in order to promote their videos. One investment that goes a long way toward attracting higher quality visitors is making on-site videos accessibility at scale, e.g., for every product in your catalog. This ensures reach for long-tail keywords, which are known to drive the highest quality traffic and best conversion rates.

Pre-roll ads bring your prospects back. The average consumer will interact with your brand several times before conversion. An effective way to bring site abandoners back and recoup otherwise lost investment in traffic is with retargeted ads designed to re-engage abandoners based on their previous behavior on your website.

Online brands can now take retargeted advertising a step further by presenting abandoners with video pre-roll ads that are personalized based on shopping history, present relevant products and current deals most appropriate to visitors’ browsing behavior. Retargeted pre-roll ads (see Office Depot example below) outperform traditional retargeted banner ads with higher conversion rates and often with above-average order value, leading to a significant return on ad spend.

On-site video increases conversion rates. When videos are properly produced, they captivate users. The availability of video also enhances credibility and the overall impression of the website even among users who do not view them. What’s more, videos generated in real time enhance the potential of on-site videos even further. As content, such as price, seasonal deals and last-minute offers constantly change, product videos are created on the fly to overcome what was a major challenge for manual video production. The result is not only a richer and more engaging shopping experience, but also higher conversion rates.

Online video can be an effective customer service tool. A company’s ability to retain customers strongly depends on the way it services them from the point of first contact and throughout the customer’s lifetime with the brand. Online video is another tool brands can use to deliver the best possible service experience.

Use video to onboard new customers with in-depth product demonstrations, provide order and provisioning status (see Dell example below), or deliver complex bills, statements and invoices with an easily digestible explanation of usage and fees. Companies that have done this have customers who make more informed repeat purchases and less calls to the contact center, resulting in fewer product returns, decreased merchandising and support costs, greater trust and credibility, and generally higher customer satisfaction.

Online video makes for more impactful nurturing campaigns. The effectiveness of best customer nurturing practices, including email campaigns, newsletters, loyalty programs and customer portals, is often enhanced with personalization features to engage the customer with offerings that resonate based on his profile, shopping history and browsing trail.

Implementing personalized videos based on individual shopping history can significantly enhance efforts to nurture, upsell and retain existing customers. The open rate for video newsletters, for example, is two to three times higher than for text. Personalized video newsletters can include a greeting with the recipient’s name, as well as display promotional offerings based on browsing history, geography or preference segmentation.

At right is an example of an email nurturing campaign from Shopbop.com to a customer who recently purchased a pair of denim jeans.

These five applications of online video bridge the gap between live and virtual experiences for the consumer and offers the most streamlined way to present information in all of their touch points with your brand.

Do you have other considerations for successful engagement with online video? Please share your experiences below – I’d love to hear from you.

SmartVideo delivers a compelling, personalized, real-time video experience designed to reach people with what they need to know in the most engaging, entertaining and informative way possible. SundaySky’s innovative convergence of technology and creativity has advanced the use of SmartVideo to more effectively engage people at every step of the customer lifecycle. Follow SundaySky on Twitter and Facebook.

Online video is the fastest growing advertising medium with over 8.3B video ads in March, according to comScore’s latest online video rankings. As inventory grows and online video advertising strategies mature, this trend should not only continue, but accelerate.

As noted in eMarketer, Video Ad Performance measurement remains a challenge. Some advertisers use traditional TV metrics, such as Gross Rating Point, while others focus on click through rates or completion rates to measure performance. The challenge with each of these metrics is that it misses the larger goal of delivering (Return on Ad Spend (RoAS). Most other online advertising categories are performance based with a focus on delivering measurable incremental visits, conversions and revenue.

We believe a smart video advertising strategy should incorporate RoAS as the primary metric to measure true financial impact, while ensuring that the video ads also deliver positive brand experience and engagement. This requires the ability to both report on these metrics and use a control-group approach to measure how much of this performance is incremental.

Assuming an advertiser buys into the idea of using RoAS as the performance metric of choice, the whole video advertising program should be designed around the idea of visitor targeting and performance optimization to maximize RoAS. This includes optimizing the media buy, as well as optimizing the video ad. (Video ad targeting and performance optimization will be the subject of several future blog posts.)

There are many ways to measure performance of video advertising programs. Our belief is that RoAS measured via control group is the smart way to go.

SmartVideo delivers a compelling, personalized, real-time video experience designed to reach people with what they need to know in the most engaging, entertaining and informative way possible. SundaySky’s innovative convergence of technology and creativity has advanced the use of SmartVideo to more effectively engage people at every step of the customer lifecycle. Follow SundaySky on Twitter and Facebook.